Agrippa
patreon
Wake-up Call – Chapter 80 – Heroes
🕑 Added 2023-04-13 00:02:13 +0000 UTCEidolon
“Evacuate! Everyone, back away from Behemoth!” Dragon yells in my ear.
Immediately, my time perception shifts.
It’s a minor Thinker ability, one that doesn’t affect my body, just my thought processes.
Just the way I see the world.
Below me, in front of me, the beast goes still. The attackers are still processing the order.
Purity is right above him, her enhanced reflexes letting her do nothing but look around in confusion, unsure of whether the order applies to her.
I have my air manipulation in place, holding Behemoth’s roars in check. I float above the battlefield by constantly redirecting the vectors of the forces applied to me, the Thinker ability pairing perfectly well with a power that would be all but useless if I had no way to constantly monitor it and apply it carefully enough, precisely enough.
But it’s a scalpel. Something to wield with precision because it no longer has the raw power it had when I first discovered it. When I could shear through buildings with it.
Legend is to my left, shining in waves of shifting color that I once thought held some meaning, some underlying truth about where the raw potency of his power came from.
They don’t. It’s just his body’s way of acting like it still breathes. Like it still has a heartbeat. Like it lives.
Like he can die.
So I make a decision. A spur of the moment thing. Something I may live to regret.
And shoot up.
Air parts around me helped by my guiding the currents of it, letting me go just that bit faster, reaching a height I wouldn’t have without this small boost.
I swear at myself for my stupidity and unclasp my cloak, letting it fall below me, freeing me from both its weight and drag as I suddenly reach that speed I was craving for, something far above terminal velocity, if only due to my manipulation of the atmosphere.
The city is below me, the almost entirely dry riverbed a scar of mud blackened where Behemoth’s incandescent paws have trodden on it.
The ruined buildings mark its path toward the trap sprung on it by Hookwolf, where the circle of other—where the massed heroes are attacking him with all they have, some of them finally turning around, trying to flee from whatever it is that Dragon has discerned with her sensors.
And I let go.
I still rise, carried merely by momentum as the familiar, freezing, high-altitude winds buffet me, turning my trajectory into something suddenly far more eventful than moments ago.
But I have my Thinker ability. My reflexes. And so I can manage.
I reorient my sight to keep them in it, to see each and every one of them with as much detail as distance allows me to, and then I reach down with my now free vectors, moving the nexus they flow from under me, the lines of force waiting to be activated, spreading over the rubble, the molten slag, the monster, and as many of the combatants as I can reach.
Not enough.
Never enough.
The first one trips, as I was expecting, and I nudge his foot just slightly forward over a loose, broken tile that once belonged in a kitchen wall.
He regains his balance as I get a torn wire out of the way of three running heroes.
Another one struggles to get up, and I get a precariously balanced rock to roll in reach of her grasping hand so that she can do so. So that she can save herself.
Then the vectors crawling over Behemoth warn me.
And it explodes.
I feel the cracks spreading across the slithering coating of nanites, the slow motion a mere illusion, an artifact of my power’s perception as I keep falling, as my body keeps flailing, uncoordinated even as I try to adopt a parachuter’s pose and turn my chaotic freefall into gliding.
It doesn’t work. I never trained for it.
Why would I when I could fly in myriad, dazzling ways?
Not enough.
Never enough.
My vectors aren’t powerful. They are precise. I can’t stop him.
I twist around abruptly, and I see the red light pouring from within its body, from the spiderweb of slowly widening cracks, the sharp beams cutting across the powdered, dusted stone that surrounds its still shape, seeming to brand each of the gathered, fleeing capes with the same baleful crimson of Behemoth’s eye.
I see the way it holds itself. The almost sculpted pose of evil’s triumph, claws open skyward by its sides.
I fight it.
I divine where each and every piece of its broken body will land, not because I am smart enough to infer it or because I have Alexandria’s memory to remember every minute detail I need to take into account, but because I go over its body over and over, marking each dangerous piece again and again, trying to keep track of the shrapnel already flying away.
One will pierce through a woman with an Arctic fox’s tail, the minute fragment sharp enough to go through her nape without slowing down.
Another is far greater. It will crush the chest of a man with a condor’s mask, splattering his allies with his blood before they’re mauled with careful shots at their thighs and arms, condemning them to a slow death by bleeding out or, more likely, luring in rescuers like a military sniper leaving wounded combatants alive.
A mass of small ones aims at Purity. At her and every conceivable place she could reach with her flight in the short time she has to react to the threat below her.
Many more aim at Legend.
And I run out of time.
I can’t push Purity out of the way. She’s too far from the epicenter of where my power needs to be focused on so I can save as many as I can, but the pieces aimed straight at her are small enough that I can nudge them outward, broadening the spread of Behemoth’s attack until there’s a cone of safety in the middle of it.
I can do the same with the fox woman, diverting the obsidian bullet meant for her upward, above her head, the single vector dedicated to it barely enough to influence the trajectory of the violently fast sliver of obsidian.
The condor mask, I make him trip, stumble, and I stop paying attention as soon as he stretches his hand forward to arrest his fall.
Hopefully, that will be—
No time.
The Thinker headache assaults me with no warning, my temples not pulsing, but burning, but I push farther still until I can feel every minute eddy of the air caressing me, every single pull and tug at my green bodysuit.
Every single one of Behemoth’s projectiles.
I deflect all the small ones, all those that are effortless to redirect away from their targets, and try to nudge the victims of those too big for me to meaningfully divert out of the way. Some have enhanced reflexes, distorted perceptions, and react to my warnings, jumping out of the way, following the paths I mean them to go in.
Others won’t make it.
I curse while keeping my face still and redirect those vectors where they can do something, to pieces of obsidian midway to their intended victims that I could do nothing about with a single vector, but that maybe, just maybe—
My head pounds, my vision goes red, and I lose my grip on time.
I fall.
My vectors are below me, still stuck trying to do an impossible task. Something that I wasn’t strong enough to achieve.
I suppress the agonic scream tearing its way past my throat as so many die that I should’ve been able to save.
Not enough.
Never enough.
***
Purity
This is my job.
I… I have to do my job.
I forget about big blasts, about gathering power, and just start shooting around Behemoth as I fly up, out of the blast radius, out of the incoming explosion.
It’s easier than I thought, as if my power reacts to it, as if I get faster and faster with every moment, fast enough to see the big pieces of his body blasting away to the long-ranged capes that were shooting at him even as the closest ones bleed and fall, some alive, some…
Not.
But I shoot. I can’t do anything but shoot, pouring so much light from my hands, from inside of me, that I lose my glow, and my flight slows down until Kayden Anders’ unremarkable brown hair flies over my eyes, and I have to sweep it away with a frantic hand that is not shooting, that is not doing my job, that is getting people killed, and they trusted me, they finally trusted me, and I’m still screwing it up—
I see once again, already aiming at a piece of glowing rock about to flatten a duo of water-wielding capes near the riverbed, and—
And Behemoth looks up.
He’s still standing, still in the middle of the ruined battlefield we thought we had trapped him in.
His red eye glows.
And his body…
He’s smooth. Impossibly so, a black mirror that flows rather than bend as the red, molten ground below him runs orange and crimson streaks over his naked, slender shape.
He doesn’t look like a skeleton. It’s not like he just tore off his flesh.
It’s…
It’s like a molten wax man dangling from a thread, stretched beyond caricature and into outright horror.
And it opens his mouth.
I know what’s coming.
And I won’t be fast enough to dodge it.
***
Legend
I catch David before he dies.
So I’m below where I should be, under the monster as it emerges from the cocoon, free of Armsmaster’s nanites, the light of his eye as disturbing to witness as it’s ever been.
Purity’s beams dot the battlefield, strangely comforting to see as the former villainess struggles as much as I know David just did, as much as I want to.
So I do.
I unleash a torrent of lasers. Freezing ones to set up barricades. Gravity ones to turn flying death into falling rocks. Burning ones to consume those fragments flying behind me as I twist light so that I don’t have blind spots, so that I can see as much as possible.
It’s not enough. Some escape my sight, find their targets, take their lives.
I keep trying as I fly up, my unconscious friend in my arms as Behemoth looks up to let out a triumphant roar that—
I fly.
Faster than I ever have while holding someone, while cradling David’s head with my hand so that he won’t die from sheer whiplash.
It’s not fast enough.
I’m just in time to see the shockwave of Behemoth’s cry reach Purity. To see her look of dawning horror as her own flight is too slow to get her out of the way even as I shoot a freezing beam in front of her to try and shield her.
But I’m also just in time to see my insignificant wall shatter, the irregular ice fragments breaking further down until they become suspended droplets as Behemoth’s roar flashes through them and finally vaporizes them.
Just in time to engrave her eyes in my mind as they widen before the shock goes through her body, the concentric rings rippling across her flesh in distorted ways until her bones are pulverized and the waves smooth over her.
And then I’m no longer looking.
But she remains engraved.
Laura, Martin, Anne, Ivan, Marie, Joseph, Helen, Peter, Jessica, Scott, Barbara…
Kayden.
***
Hannah
“We need to go back!” I shout into the communicator in my ear.
He nods, already steering his bike toward the monster.
Toward danger.
I love him so much.
I’m already recharging my power with another rocket grenade, my fingers steady even as he drives around nearly frozen shrapnel, the pieces of Behemoth and torn buildings no more than inconvenient obstacles that he casually dodges with a grace I’ve always admired.
Because it was not power-granted. It was earned.
Because I had perfect aim. Perfect recall. A perfectly versatile weapon.
And he had hours and hours stuck in a workshop.
So I take the fruit of those hours and aim, not relying only on my power, but on his armor assisting me, steadying me.
And on my own hours stuck in a firing range, relying not on my power-granted dexterity and skill, but on having pushed myself to my limits until I dropped from exhaustion just to see if I could still line a shot while sweating, on my knees, my arms shaking with the effort to remain still as I raised a gun held in two trembling hands.
To see if I could do it.
And then to make myself do it.
The rocket grenade flies off, and I’m already reaching for the next one as the red light running across Behemoth’s rippling body seems to draw a target for me, to direct my shots at its pelvis.
It throws a lightning bolt that crawls across the distance to my first attack and blows it up.
Legend rushes to fly between us, to intercept the next bolt after this first one has finally struck something other than the blackened earth.
I fire and reload.
Behemoth points with a thin, stretched claw at me, the lightning already traveling toward me, and Legend’s glowing, burningform stretches his own hand in return, the invisible lasers he has used to shield us so far surely flying to intercept the bolt, to hit it in mid-air, to redirect it toward—
The bolt crawls up.
My jaw drops in horror, and I only barely manage to suppress my own gasp as the lightning speeds up, splitting into too many branches for me to keep track of as they chase after Legend while he flies up, too slow to really evade them until—
Until he throws Eidolon away and Legend vanishes, too fast for me to follow even in this slowed time.
“What—” I cut myself off, unable to even think of how to continue the question as Behemoth’s bolts spread around before they fall like a fountain’s arching sprouts, raining down on the Yangban and spearing through too many of them.
“He couldn’t flee with Eidolon. The acceleration would have killed him,” Colin answers me.
I look at it. At the monster standing, his thin frame already rippling with its regeneration as Eidolon seems to be stuck falling down to the ground below, arms and legs trailing limply behind him.
“I… I couldn’t do that,” I finally say, wasting time, not shooting the next grenade. “I just… I couldn’t.”
Colin, this time, doesn’t answer.
But his right hand reaches over his left shoulder even as he threads through boulders suspended in mid-air.
And I clasp it as strongly as I can.
***
Lisa
What do I do?
What do I do?!
“Liz! Liz, stop!” Taylor yells, grabbing my shoulders and turning me around.
To face her.
And I am… I am not…
“Stop,” she whispers, her voice on the verge of hurt as she slowly peels the fingers of my left hand out of the back of my right, where I’ve clutched and dug my nails in, and—
Reaction to stressful—
I know. I know, all right? I—I am—
“Not your fault,” she says, still keeping her tone steady and low, reassuring, as if speaking to a maudlin child unable to keep her temper in check and—
Lisa Wilbourn’s self-deprecation—
“It is,” I say, silencing both of the reassuring voices. “It is my fault. Behemoth is going to fight beyond what he’s ever tried before, and every single death will be on me for trying to get clever.”
She looks at me through citrine lenses, her bare mouth thinning at my words.
And she takes it off.
She’s… I don’t—
Dilator naris and depressor septi—
Yeah. She’s angry.
“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare take responsibility for people believing in you. Don’t you dare blame yourself for what a monster does—”
“Then who? Who, if not me, would have the sheer hubristo defy an Endbringer and think I could win just by being clever?!”
Taylor narrows her eyes, and I can already hear the scathing rebuttals, the yelled admonitions.
Except I never will.
Because a loud explosion shakes the metallic floor between us, and intense ozone assaults my nostrils.
“This is the Mark V,” Kid Win’s calm voice says.
Taylor turns toward him, her swarm buzzing with even more agitation than when we first saw a cape’s head explode under jagged obsidian.
I do the same, reaching for my gun.
And I see the Tinker aiming up, at the ceiling, with something that is not a laser, nor a raygun, nor any number of things it could be, but is still clearly recognizable as a weapon.
“The Mark IV couldn’t hold a charge for more than two hours. The Mark III had inadequate penetration against all but the lowest-rated Brutes. The Mark II had excessive penetration no matter what setting it was on.
“The Mark I exploded.”
He holsters it on a metallic compartment that seamlessly slides out of his armor’s hip.
And then he takes his helmet off.
His face is red, his lips pressed, the corners of his eyes narrowed.
And he’s about to cry.
“I have been a failure since I became a Tinker. I have been a failure since I became a wannabe hero. I have been a failure most of my life. But what I refuse? Is to stay a failure. And if a Tinker with the least cooperative specialty since Leet can keep trying until he manages to make a Mark V energy projector, the fucking Thinker seven can pick the pieces of her ego off the floor and make a new plan,” he says.
His eyes blaze despite the unshed tears. Despite the anger, frustration, and knowledge that it’s his friends and partners that are at risk of death on the other side of the world.
I almost stumble.
And then I do, allowing myself to fall back on Colin’s borrowed chair that I’ll steal from him as soon as he makes it back, safe and alive, from the warzone he keeps waltzing through.
“Dragon,” I whisper, my voice taking a moment to gather strength. Momentum. “Send this message to—”
***
Thirteen
One will be satisfied.
Maybe even happy.
The foreigners’ plan lies in shambles, and more and more of their capes keep dying or being crippled as we strive to rewind time those vital fractions of a second, to get our own members back from the journey with no return.
It’s a fascinating ability. A power that would make everything trivial if we were not facing something that could never be that, that will always overwhelm. Crush. Annihilate.
One will be happy.
I fly over a woman wearing the insignia of a bat, the Tinker deploying green glowing rods around herself that may hold in the face of the next barrage, and I gather impulse from all the metal pieces she’s carrying, speeding up to another woman in the middle of a fall, her green cloak trailing behind her as her flight deserts her and blood spurts from the hole in her abdomen.
I reach her in time, and her colors shift as she floats back up to where she was when the bullet tore through her, her armor and flesh mending just before I’m forced to let her go, to let her return to time, but one in which the weapon that killed her has already passed.
My collar shoots a warning shock over my nape, and I turn to stand by the side of my comrades as soon as I can, trying to catch sight of anyone else in my reach that I can help.
That I can save.
Even if One wouldn’t be happy about it.
But the monster roars, more flying capes falling at the passage of his thunder, and all of them are too far from me to do anything about it—
Legend. Legend flies down from wherever he fled to while evading Behemoth’s lightning, and he’s managed to catch Eidolon in time, right before he—
Another lightning bolt, and Legend lets go.
But he’s done enough. He’s slowed him enough.
So I race over the Tinker yet again, gathering more speed, just a tad more, just what I need to reach Eidolon as he crashes to the ground below, his spine breaking over a jutting piece of wall that spears through him with a disturbing crack and disquieting, wet noises.
That kills him.
Just in time for me to undo it.
One won’t be happy.
I also won’t be, as soon as they are done with me.
But now, just now, just in this moment where I’ve saved the life of the second most powerful parahuman in the world, of one of our greatest hopes against Behemoth and whatever the others are…
I am happy.
Then the collar shoots sheer agony through my body, and I crumple to my knees as Eidolon falls on top of my back with just enough strength to, maybe, break a rib or two.
Maybe three.
Breathing under him is even more painful than what the collar just did to me, but he’s also breathing, ragged and labored, his own ribs maybe as shattered as mine.
I clench my teeth. My fists.
And I see.
In front of me, the bracelet that Dragon always provides us with, the emergency communications system that has never before served us as well as it has today.
It blinks in green light over a black screen.
‘You used to have a name,’ it says.
‘I’ll give it back to you,’ it promises.
My heart beats hard enough to make my ribs protest, and another shock comes from the collar. One that is milder, just a warning for me to heal myself and get back to the fight.
So I do.
Time shifts around me once more, my bones only feeling the ghost of pain, the fleeting specter already fading as I find myself once more flying toward the falling Eidolon.
I layer my arms with sliding plates of my own forcefields, augmenting my strength, and I catch the fallen hero.
Then I turn around, kicking off the broken wall that no longer bears his blood, accelerating as sharply as I can toward my teammates.
I drop Eidolon along the way, hoping that his helmet will prove effective against the rubble beneath us. The stones that used to be a city.
Three turns toward me.
He’s too late.
Thirty-One’s beams spring from my fingers and decapitate my mission leader, his head spinning in the air, the wound cauterized so swiftly that not even a drop of blood comes out of it.
There’s still time.
Any of us can rewind my murder. Return him from the journey with no return.
None do.
The rest of the gathered Yangban look at me, and I allow myself to alight on the broken ground before I stand taller than I have in years.
Then I raise my bracelet.
“Dragon. What’s the plan?” I say.
And I wait for the words that will condemn or save us.
